On many of those magical Sundays, we’d often see a pod of dolphin racing around the extreme western point of the beach, heading northeast toward Frederiksted. Fueled with liquid courage, we’d always race into the water and swim out to where they were.

Unfortunately, we never caught up to them. In the fading light of those late afternoons, it’s doubtful we would’ve seen them too well anyway.

The missed opportunity of this Sandy Point memory stands in extremely stark contrast to the video featured above – a simply breathtaking encounter with a sperm whale captured on-film off the coast of Dominica.

This striking, almost unbelievable video is the work of Howard Hall, who together with his wife Michele, rank among the top natural history filmmakers today specializing in marine wildlife. If you’re a fan of the PBS series Nature, or National Geographic TV specials on the undersea world, then you’ve no doubt marveled at their work before. Or maybe you’ve caught a few of their IMAX films – Into the Deep, Island of the Sharks, Deep Sea 3D and Coral Reef Adventure, among them.

In short, the Halls’ work represents the pinnacle in modern undersea filmmaking, a fact made clear in this brief, yet absolutely phenomenal video that puts a perfectly uncommon spin on the type of whale-watching most people (even us!) feel lucky enough to experience from a boat.

About Us

Uncommon Caribbean is Steve and Patrick Bennett, two brothers from St. Croix changing the way people think about travel to the Caribbean by putting authentic aspects of island life and the region's unique cultural heritage in the spotlight ahead of the glitzy, one-size fits all tourist trap image popularized over the years. Read more...